There is tremendous variety in the many types of schools that are not in the mainstream of public education, but represent variations on traditional educational methods and models. A wide range of private schools, vocational schools, and exam schools offer programs geared towards students with particular interests and talents or parents who desire a different learning environment for their children.While many of these schools differ from the mainstream in the focus of their curriculum, the … [Read more...]
How The Political Climate Is Not Promoting Student-Centered Education
Demonstrated dramatically in the case of an Atlanta school scandal, in which teachers admitted to changing test scores in order to meet the demands of the school superintendent, No Child Left Behind puts the focus in the wrong place. In the words of Dianne Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H. W. Bush, the “simple minded and singular focus on test scores distorts and degrades the meaning and practice of education.”Well-formulated standards are of great use … [Read more...]
A History of Assembly Line Education
Despite the work of Sugata Mitra, Maria Montessori, and those student-centered educators in traditional classrooms who were keeping the child and the learning process at the center of their thinking, it is ironic the vast energy in public education in the 20th century was moving completely in the opposite direction. At this time there was a drive towards educational models based on the principal of mass production assembly lines, where efficiency and cost control are essential to doing business … [Read more...]
Strategies for Overcoming the Pitfalls of a Traditional Classroom Model
Aclassroom can be lifeless and boring, or even downright dangerous. Students canbe highly disrespectful, uncooperative, unmotivated, threatening, even assaultive. Teachers can be woefully out of touch with even the best ofstudents, so that these students lose their motivation, at least for theduration of this class period. A standard classroom can be a dismal place forall concerned, or a place of excitement and challenge. However, theseenvironments can change.Take thefollowing movie clips … [Read more...]
Using Technology to Drive Student-Centered Education
During a trial in the East Auburn Community School in Auburn, Maine, a group of students were “taught to read and write using an iPad” and “another group of students were taught the ‘old fashioned’ way, using a pen and paper, it was found that in every single literacy test, students using the iPad outperformed those who did not use the iPad by a significant margin” (TabTimes, February 2012).Noting this story is important to the expanded view of student-centered education, especially in the … [Read more...]
A Continuum of Educational Context and Styles
There are various educational practices that embrace the notion of student-centered education. A good way to picture this is to think of a continuum with the least directed, most learner-driven forms of education at one end, and the most ordered and authority-directed forms at the other. Broad Context of EducationLeast directed, Learner-Driven <---------------------------------> Most ordered, Authority Driven Schools School Districts Individual Classroom Forms Range of … [Read more...]
Does Your Environment Reflect Student-Centeredness’?
On hearing the term student-centered education, many people will have a pretty good idea of what it means to them. It will probably have something to do with a type of educational environment in which the child or student is the focal point of activity. And what other focus could there be, one might ask?Since it is the student who is being educated, where else would you focus? As it turns out, this is not nearly as obvious as we might hope or imagine. In many learning environments, the focus … [Read more...]
The Need to Move Beyond Curriculum Standards and Traditional Educational Models
A room full of students is not the same as a room full of children. Typically when we consider a child as a student we have already narrowed our point of view. “Student” is a partial identity, occurring only in the context of classroom and education and leaving out many critical aspects of who the learner actually is.In our more expansive view, however, a teacher gazes out on the rows of faces in a classroom and is immediately confronted with the fact that the children in front of her are … [Read more...]
